Participant

Not Prioritized

Bring Back Video Capture

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
October 20, 2023
68 replies
19189 views

This morning when I opened Premiere Pro 24 for the first time, I was dismayed at not being able to find the Capture option in the File menu. Upon contacting customer support, I was told that feature had been retired, and I was directed to the following page:

https://helpx.adobe.com/in/premiere-pro/kb/retiring-tape-based-workflows.html#sa_src=web-messaging

Here's my problem. As a professional media archivist, I used the capture system frequently in the process of digitizing old video tapes (mostly VHS and U-Matic, sometimes DVCPro) for digital access and storage. The article above seems to think tape-based capture is only for transferring tape-to-tape, which is wrong. There are professional archivists and media professionals all over the country, or all over the world, whose job it is to preserve tape-based media via digitization. Adobe has now effectively abandoned an entire industry because it thinks people don't need this feature anymore. Adobe is wrong. As I write this, I have several dozen VHS tapes at my desk waiting to be digitized, and now I have to come up with another software solution because Adobe evidently does not care about customers like me who do this for a living.

Dear Adobe, this was a poorly researched decision, potentially affecting a lot more of your customers than you realize. I am asking for the tape-to-digital capture feature to be restored to the software for video professionals like me who were using it faithfully.

Mod note: Title changed slightly.

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jefjaeger

Participating Frequently

I have the Canopus ADVC-110 for capturing from analog sources. It does not have any software. I use mine with Premiere Pro. Now that I have been betrayed by Adobe once again, I will need to find an alternative as much of my business is converting analog media to digital. What would it hurt to just leave the Capture function in the software? Ridiculous.

JonesVid

Community Expert

Good to know.

Mpeg and AVi are the main ones on material I have but have some older Matrox stuff. Might need to re-import that.

I'm sure other users who use Tape based formats as part of a business will be interested to hear codecs have not been touched ....so far.

J

Joe26703127skh3

Participant

There was a thread that has now been closed for comments about bringing back the capture function.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-ideas/bring-back-video-capture/idc-p/14535825/page/4

Adobe's point about capturing from tape being obselete is missing the point.

The capture function not only allows you to capture from tape, but it also allows you to capture a live feed on set. This is an emormous part of professional editing these days. Productions want quicker turnarouds and we can't be waiting for the DIT to wait for the camera card to be changed, copy the data, transcode the material and give it to the editor. With the capture function we can take a live feed, even remotely through the internet. This is the way to do cutting on set properly, and Adobe has literally wiped itself out of this part of professional use. Which means now we either have to use an old laptop with Prem 2021 installed to get the functionality (it doesn't show up in my versions of 2022), or use Avid, which would then get used for the rest of the job. It surely can't be a huge deal to allow capture from an SDI signal through an interface into firewire. The idea that we can use capture software supplied by a third party does not work in this scenario.

You need to sort this out sharpish, please.

Bruce Bullis

Community Manager

> Please make the Premiere Pro Codec Support Road Map clear for users.

I'll ask our friends from Formats to do so; the removal of capture support from PPro did not involve any change to PPro's supported codecs.

JonesVid

Community Expert

Question for @Bruce Bullis

Its clear Premiere Capture is no more. Final.

Can you clarify a couple of things though.

If I have captured HDV material or DV material already on Data Storage facilities (not edited yet ) will you still maintain MPeg codec or Standard Definition AVi codec in which it was originally captured in Premiere Pro ?.

In addition I might use an older Premiere Version just to Capture off tape (as required), but then Import those files into Premiere 24.x or 25.x etc for editing in the future

Please make the Premiere Pro Codec Support Road Map clear for users.

Thanks

R Neil Haugen

Legend

I don't know how much business experience you have. And that could be part of the attitude. I've been a "sole proprietor" my entire adult life, over 40 years now.

We always had to make decisions as to whether certain types of similar work, to the work that we did ... we would do. And some things we had done, we eventually stopped doing.

With a few unhappy customers, but that work was no longer actually profitable for us at all, and often was more labor intensive than other things we did. Sometimes we held on for a while after it wasn't profitable, just to be kind to our clients.

But eventually, we would have to simply decide to drop a line of work ... permanently.

To me, that's all that Adobe is doing here, and as they are not the only company dropping tape work, it's very believable. There simply aren't enough of us as a percentage of the users to justify the expense anymore.

It's the same thing as several color things I would like to see ... there simply aren't enough others who would actually use those to make it worth the time to produce them.

That's not mean, that's not "ignoring" paying customers. It's just reality.

Much as I don't like it either, it's just ... what is. Sadly.

I'll be at NAB again in a couple weeks, and will be checking there for tape capture solutions. Sometimes someone will have something that is spiffy and not too expensive for a small shop like mine.

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

jefjaeger

Participating Frequently

We are clearly being ignored. Perhaps our money isn't green enough.

jefjaeger

Participating Frequently

I have capture interfaces. What other software are you even talking about? Right now, I have no other options.Most of my business is converting analog audio and video to digital. What alternatives would you suggest? Unbelieveable. I have been a loyal Adobe customer for years. Betrayed again.

S

SCOTT_L

Inspiring

AVID Media Composer.

Currently they support (on PC) AVID DNxHD, ProRes, AVC Long GOP, XAVC Long GOP, J2k and J2k IMX (All with the family for the codecs)

Bruce Bullis

Community Manager

What do you use, today, to capture / create DNxHD media?

S

SCOTT_L

Inspiring

For PC owners, ProRes (codec family) is the most important. AVID DNxHD (codec family) is the other. There are others that would be nice but that would depend on hardware.

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